Dominion: Part of Our Job

Briefly, we have “dominion,” not ownership. God owns this place. As stewards, we have authority and responsibilities. (Genesis 1:29, 2:15; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 306–308, 373, 2293, 2402)

Managing this world and its resources is part of our job. We can use what’s here, within reason: for ourselves, and preparing for future generations. (Catechism, 2415–2418, 2456)

Pollution

I’ll be talking about PCBs and PBDEs found deep in Earth’s ocean, and Mexico City’s effort to control air quality.

Pollution and politics got entangled, so if you’re bracing for a diatribe against someone or something — please relax.

My interest in pollution and other environmental matters comes from living on Earth, and being a Catholic who understands our faith. I’m not conservative or liberal: just Catholic. (January 22, 2017; August 12, 2016)

Pollution is far from a new environmental issue. Scientists found very old soot on the roof of caves. What we’ve done to stay healthy, and how effective we’ve been, has changed over the millennia.

I’m expected to exercise “justice and charity” in how I use earthly goods. Private property is a good idea: but I must remember that my neighbors, and folks who haven’t been born yet, share this world with me. (Catechism, 2401–2406, 2415)

“…The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole….”
(“Caritas in Veritate,” Benedict XVI (June 29, 2009))

It’s also quite toxic, which is why various governments started banning the stuff. That was in the 1970s, around the time PBDE production started in America.

The stuff makes a good flame retardant. That’s why we put it in so many building materials, electronics, furnishings, motor vehicles, airplanes, plastics, polyurethane foams, and textiles. I talked about fire, humans, and learning, last week. (February 10, 2017)

It didn’t take nearly as long to realize that PBDE was toxic, too. Still, it looked like a good idea at the time.

Besides being toxic, PCBs and PBDEs are notoriously difficult to get rid of. Get rid of safely, that is. PCBs will break down at very high temperatures: into other toxic compounds, so that’s not a good idea.

They’ll react with various chemicals, and scientists are learning if that’ll lead to practical disposal technology. Other scientists have found microorganisms that eat PCBs: slowly. So will some ligninolytic fungi.2

Quite a few folks think turning PCBs and PBDEs into less-toxic stuff is important, so I think there’s reasonable hope that we’ll find a solution.

Meanwhile, I gather that most of us have stopped making the chemicals; so the problem now is mostly dealing with what’s already out there.

The idea that parts of Earth’s crust had been moving hadn’t sunk in yet, so there was little reason to think that the seafloor was anything but a huge sedimentary deposit.

On the other hand, we did know about a few shallow spots. Matthew Fontaine Maury did some groundbreaking — waterbreaking?? — research in the mid-to-late 1800s.

Using soundings taken in 1853, he noticed comparatively shallow water between Newfoundland and Ireland.

Folks were planning a transatlantic telegraph cable at the time, so in 1854 Maury wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Navy describing a “telegraph plateau” along the proposed route.

It seemed too good to be true: and was. There is shallow water along the route. But depth in the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, discovered in 1963, varies from 400 fathoms to nearly 2500 fathoms.

We were learning a lot, fast, about Earth in the 1950s and 60s. We didn’t have all the answers then, and still don’t. ‘Science news’ has remained occasionally more imaginative than accurate. (January 27, 2017; January 20, 2017; December 16, 2016)

We have, however, learned that critters live just about everywhere on Earth’s surface: including the deepest ocean trenches. We’re still not sure how long toxins stay in food chains and webs. But as I keep saying, we’re still learning.3

Amyworm is our name for several sorts of moth larvae: Spodoptera frugiperda, fall armyworm, is this article’s featured creature. It’s native to the Americas, and gets its name by being active mostly in autumn; and late summer, in the southern United States.

Mythimna separata, Northern armyworm, does the same in China, Japan, South-east Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Eastern Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific Islands.

Mythimna unipuncta, the “true” armyworm, is particularly common in North America. It’s in the Hawaiian Islands, some areas of South America, southern Europe, North Africa, the Sahel region of Africa, Central Asia and eastern Bangladesh, and east Africa, too.

The critters get their “armyworm” name by ‘marching’ through crops, defoliating the area, then moving on or burrowing to pupate and become moths.

The good news is that folks have developed quite a few ways to deal with them: picking the caterpillars off by hands, setting ducks loose in the fields, blacklight and pheromone traps for adults, and spraying pesticides.

We’ve been looking for alternatives to pesticides, which led scientists to several viruses, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and a bacterium, that will kill armyworms. Quite a few of the critters die, eventually: but not before eating most of a season’s crop.4

A Digression on Maize, Mainly Linguistic

“Maize,” by the way, is from the Americas, too. The first domestic variety was developed where Mexico is now, some 10,000 years ago. I don’t know what folks called it then.

About five centuries back, folks speaking Taíno told Spanish-speaking folks about mahiz. By the time the word got to me, my Upper-Midwest American English habits have me pronouncing it the same way I do “maze.”

Corn/maize/mahiz was developed long before the Olmecs, a name we got from Nahuatl, the Aztec language.

First, the good news. Folks apparently have been cooperating with Mexico City’s Hoy No Circula program, started in 1989. It put limits on which cars could be used on weekdays.

Now, the not-so-good news: Mexico City is still on the now-drained Lake Texcoco lakebed, surrounded by mountains. That’s not going to change any time soon, and neither is the city’s comparative lack of natural ventilation.

Stuff that gets into Mexico City’s air tends to stay there, at least for a while. Los Angeles, another city lying in a basin, has similar problems.

Then there’s what folks called the site of another American city, back in the day: “shikaakwa.” By the time English-speaking Americans tried saying something a French explorer wrote, the word was “Chicago.” Apparently it means “wild garlic.”

I give folks speaking Miami-Illinois languages credit for some sense of poetry, and suspect that a more idiomatically-accurate translation of shikaakwa as a place name for what we called the Chicago Portage would be “big stinky.”

Expectations, Speculation, and Hope

The researchers said they found “no evidence that the expansion was successful in getting drivers to switch to lower-emitting forms of transportation.”

Expecting a 15% reduction in air pollution after adding Saturday to the Hoy No Circula program made sense: assuming that all of the measured pollution was from automobiles. One-sixth of six days is 16.67%, which is pretty close to 15%.

Also assuming that the city’s alternative vehicles were less polluting per person than privately-owned cars.

The researchers say the city’s public transit is slow and uncomfortable, which wouldn’t encourage use. I’m not convinced that public transit is necessarily less polluting than cars.

I strongly suspect that part of Mexico City’s air pollution is from the city’s 50,000 or so industries.5

Don’t get me wrong: I think Mexico City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities can be fine places to live. After we get some engineering and social issues sorted out.

“Scientists have recorded the events that unfolded after the Earth’s magnetic shield was breached.

“Openings in the planet’s magnetic field are not uncommon, but it is rarer to get the opportunity to gather data while such an event is in progress.

“A cosmic ray monitoring facility recorded a burst of cosmic rays associated with the opening.

“The magnetic field breach was the result of charged particles from the Sun striking the Earth at high speed.

“The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located at the Cosmic Ray Laboratory (CRL) in Ooty, southern India, recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays of about 20 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) on 22 June 2015.

“‘In this case the magnetic field was breached for only two hours and then returned back to normal. The magnetic field strength reduced only by 2%,’ Dr Sunil Gupta, lead scientist at the CRL told the BBC….”

In 1902 Oliver Heaviside modified Maxwell’s equations, and said that we could look for a layer in the upper atmosphere that reflects some radio waves. Arthur E. Kennelly apparently said pretty much the same thing at the same time.

Edward Victor Appleton got the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that the Kennelly-Heaviside layer was real: despite our having to learn something new about physics in the process, and that’s yet again another topic.

Roberts thought the bright spot was a glitch, until another image showed the spot — which had moved farther away from the sun. Scientists confirmed that this was the first clear detection of a coronal mass ejection.

Back in 1859, Röntgen rays and robot spaceships were generations in the future. It wasn’t until 1953 that scientists started noticing connections between sparky telegraph poles, spectacular auroral displays, and what two amateur astronomers had noticed.

Auroras of September 1 and 2 that year were spectacular. Gold miners in the Rocky Mountains started fixing breakfast, mistaking the glow for morning’s light.

Folks in the northeastern U.S. could read newspapers by the aurora’s light, which was visible in sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico, Queensland, and places even closer to the equator.

“…Between 12 and 1 o’clock, when the display was at its full brilliancy, the quiet streets of the city resting under this strange light, presented a beautiful as well as singular appearance.”
(Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser (September 3, 1859) via Wikipedia)

Some telegraph operators got electric shocks, telegraph pylons sparked, and some telegraph equipment stayed operational after their plugs were pulled.6

Lloyd’s of London and Making Progress

Lloyd’s of London produced a report “for general information purposes only” in 2013.

They figuring that a similar event would cost between 0.6 and 2.6 trillion dollars. That’s just in the United States; from damaged electrical equipment, power outages, and communication breakdowns.

We still don’t know exactly how coronal mass ejections work, what causes them, or how they interact with Earth’s magnetic field. For that matter, we’re far from certain how Earth’s magnetic field affects conditions here on the surface.6

That’s not, I think, a reason to be fearful. We’ve never known all there is to know about how this universe works, but we’ve been learning: and have recently discovered many previously-unknown questions. I see that as progress.

5. Halley Base Relocated

(From BAS/M.Krzysztofowicz, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“All eight modules were towed across the ice shelf to the new location further from the sea”(From BAS/P.Bucktrout, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The move was made possible by a hydraulic leg and ski system ”(From BAS, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The central red module weighs over 200 tonnes”
(BBC News))

“The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has completed the move of its Halley research station.

“The base is sited on the floating – and moving – Brunt Ice Shelf, and had to be relocated or face being dumped in the ocean.

“Tractors were used to tow the eight modules that make up the futuristic-looking Halley 23km further ‘inland’.

“Last month, BAS announced it would ‘mothball’ the station for the duration of the coming Antarctic winter….

“…It has two key functions. One is as a support link to deep-field exploration of the Antarctic interior. And the second – and main task – is as a centre of research itself….

“…Present day work also includes investigations into ‘space weather’ – the impacts that occur when particles and magnetic fields billowing away from the Sun collide with Earth’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere….”

Normally there would be a crew of about 14 staying at the base over winter. I suppose BAS wants to give scientists more time to study the new cracks in Brunt Ice Shelf, before committing an overwinter crew. It’s a long winter night there. Sundown comes April 29, and it’ll be dark until dawn: August 13.

Nobody calls Antarctica home, not yet. But around 1,000 technicians and scientists stay for the winter at permanent bases. Antarctica’s population is usually about 4,000 in summer: including a few tourists.

Faith, Fear, and Lovecraft

“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age….”
(“The Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)

My lively interest in our expanding knowledge of God’s visible creation isn’t, I think, strictly required. But studying natural processes is a good idea. It’s one way we can learn more about God. (Catechism, 31–35)

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About Brian H. Gill

I'm a sixty-something married guy with six kids, four surviving, in a small central Minnesota town. I mostly write and make digital art. I'm only interested in three things: that which exists within the universe; that which exists beyond; and that which might exist.

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